this machine will not communicate

Tonight my sister and I watched two episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - "Frank's Pretty Woman" and "The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore."  We also watched the Season Seven blooper reel.

I laughed so hard I cried, and then my throat closed up, and then I had a coughing fit, and then I threw up a little.

I'm not even exaggerating, not even a little bit.

There's a couple parts of every script that are hard for me to write, and one of those parts is the very first part.  I have a tough time with opening scenes, and that's what I'm working on right now.

Well, was working on, until I decided that I really needed to post.  About what?  No clue.  So here's a random list of things that are randomly popping into my mind as I type.

• I really need to stop answering "Thank you" with "Sure thing!"
• Hot tea is the right temperature for about eighty seconds.
• It does no good to write out lists of upcoming due dates, goals, plans, etc. if I promptly lose said lists.
• I really want to finish watching Caprica (I got bummed out when it was canceled and took a break), but I have, like, eleventy other shows I'm watching right now.
• Exactly 100 word drabbles are the dickens to write.

Last year, I had to cancel my gym membership because I couldn't afford it anymore.  It was okay during the summer and fall, because I could get outside and walk.  But ever since winter set in, I've been feeling pretty sedentary.  So yesterday I checked out a workout DVD from the library, and decided I would just start doing what I could inside.

Except I only made it through about the first fifteen minutes, because I can't figure out how to do it.  And this is always my problem with workout DVDs, and every time I try again I'm like, "maybe this time I will magically have become more coordinated!"  But I never do.  The women on the screen look so graceful and athletic, and I just feel like my arms and legs don't know how to work at the same time.  By the time I manage to actually work out how the move is supposed to go, the perky chipper little thing running the video has already moved on.  And I know, I know, you have to practice and it might take a couple times before you get everything down.  I still end up feeling like an absolute nitwit.

Does anyone have any workout video recs that don't require you to be graceful or coordinated?  Because I think I'm just going to start making super upbeat playlists and dancing around like a coked-out Elaine from Seinfeld.

I have to go to work today.

Thursday - that's four days ago now - nhpw told me that Tron (1982) was up on YouTube.  Now, I have not seen Tron since I was a tiny little kid.  I don't actually remember anything about it.  I have been trying to watch Tron since June - right around the time I got obsessed really into Babylon 5 and wanted to see more of Bruce Boxleitner.  So, as you can imagine, I was pretty excited.

I was even more excited when I clicked the link and saw that it was a really, really high quality upload.  I decided to download the movie from YouTube.  First of all, I was afraid it would get yanked, and I didn't want to risk missing it now that it was so close.  Second, I didn't want to watch it on my crappy old computer monitor.  No, I would convert the mp4s to AVIs, merge them into one file, and watch the movie on my nice big actual TV.

Thursday I downloaded.  Friday I converted.  Friday night!  Tron night!  A night for which to watch Tron!  Except...I couldn't get the mp4s to convert.  And when I finally did, I couldn't get the files to merge.  It's now Saturday.  I'm still working on it.  Reading FAQs.  Downloading new programs.  Finally my sister asks why I don't just download the movie from megaupload or something.  That is a great idea!  Why I have never thought of this!

So I did.  A great big AVI file.  It was shiny.  Happy, beaming, maybe crying a little, I burned it onto a DVD and pranced to the TV.  I loaded the DVD.  It...did not play.  

Hmm.  So I downloaded another one.  This time I just put it on a flash drive - make sure it works first.  I was troubled when a prompt came up telling me that some file properties couldn't be transferred, but I was still hopeful at this point.  But no.  It didn't play, either.

Sunday morning...

( The third time's the charm. )

Sometimes I wish I could Ctrl-Z real life.  I was blowing out the candle I had lit and picked up the holder to bring it to me, instead of leaning up to it.  The candle tilted, and I spilled melted wax on my keyboard and desk.  Ctrl-Z!  Undo!  Undo!

So I finished Sequence One today!  I divide a screenplay into eight sequences, each about 10-15 pages long; Act One is S1-2, Act Two is S3-6, and Act Three is S7-8.  It helps me keep track of structure, and it breaks a draft down into more manageable chunks.  So this installment takes us up to the inciting incident, or catalyst.  Whee!
( Pages 7-13 )

It's TV premiere week!  That means it's Fringe premiere week!  Yay!

I did these a couple weeks ago for the fringeverse challenge community.  Two drabble-length diary entries from the POV of two characters.  

( Peter's Diary Entry )

( Astrid's Diary Entry )

My first love was a very complicated man.  He was very, very rich, and also very, very handsome.  So you can see how I was attracted, but also how he ended up being a very arrogant, self-centered person.  Plus, there were ex problems, too.  It was kind of a passionate, tumultuous thing that didn't last very long, but when it did?  He was pretty much all I thought about.

( More about my first love. )